Crown Mountain Farms

We as Crown Mountain Farms started a few years ago with offering fiber from our own flock of cashgora goats and shetland sheep and thought the goal would be to offer fiber from other locally raised sheep breeds and Llamas, Alpacas for example. Sounds so nice and american. We had to give it a reality check:

The climate here in Washington State is not one you would consider as an honest being to be the best for creating “outrageous” fiber unless you live on Mount Rainier. None of the animals did – they lived close by, they might have had a view of Mount Rainier as our goats and sheep had but that is all. I will give you an example: With the first sunshine in January or February our breeding stock of cashmere goats went along the fence line to shed off their “fleece” – it was just to warm for them even if we as humans still would have dressed in winter coats. At least the wild birds had a feast for nest material. We realized, to have exquisite fiber we would have to go to the source:

So we get our cashmere fiber from Mongolia or China as well as the Yak, Alpaca and Llama fiber directly from the Andes – to cover some of the exotic fibers – and we checked on a world schedule where we would get a great or the best quality in this now from all the sheep breeds – and we came up with merino from australia or south america. Many great breeds come still from Great Britain like Blue Face Leicester, Shetland and Wensleydale. The best part for us as lovers of natural fibers is that so many mills have blends available nowadays which is enriching our assortment of natural fibers. Blends with silk for example. Just stunning!!!!!!!!

Because we go the extra mile in fiber preparation, we are known for the pencil roving in Corriedale which is one of the easiest fibers to learn from for a beginning spinner or you just could knit from this one-ply on a size 13-15 needle according to your pattern. Yet over the years we also loved to create colorways by dyeing the natural fiber in a different way – using Cushing Dyes most of the time – and guess we made an impact out there by now – dyeing directly with the particles to create outstanding colorways – so far we have 59 colorways and 13 new ones in our fiber club in 2011.

Of course, being an artist you don’t stop with dyeing fiber, you also want to dye yarn and so all of our commercial yarn is available in Crown Mountain Colorways. Check out our own lines called Apollo, Aphrodite, Aris, Athena, Artemis. Crown Mountain Farms is a very innovative company – we gathered hand spinners who would spin for us and so we can offer hand dyed hand spun yarn in superwash merino to our customers – in 2011 you have to be a member of the sock hop yarn club to be able to purchase this outrageous yarn. We also offer hand spun exotic yarns as well as locally spun yarns for an affordable price.

You sure will find on our website yarns you will not be able to get through the main stream yarn shops. According to our philosophy we support the knitting and fiber world with needles and crochet hooks made by Asciano or Skacel and patterns from different designers like Lisa Ellis Designs. Throughout the years we met many artists as Tara Flying Horse, Beki Ries-Montgomery and Denise Sutherland and we have their artwork presented either on our gift web page or where it belongs on our website. Not to forget Nancy from Chasing Rainbows Dyeworks and her outrageous work with dyeing fiber and yarn in her own incredible way of presenting rainbows in our life. Of course we offer spinning wheels from the magnificent New Zealand company Majacraft as well as Ashford, Schacht and Louet. To support the artists we also have a Sales Bin where one can buy by the pound and save the “almighty dollar” or just get a great deal on certain products. All in all, we humbly accept that you will be in for a journey when dealing with us.